Dinosaur cake

This is our first blog post in over a year- hoping to do a few more of these every so often!!

This blog post is about a dinosaur cake I've made for my boyfriends (25th) birthday (I also made some superhero cupcakes- please tell me other men are the same?)

I made the head out of rice type cereal- chose your own brand! I've never used this method before- however, as you may be able to see by the finished product I was a bit excited to finish so I really don't think it's the best it could be. I'm going to  focus more on the dinosaur head rather than the finished cake- because if you can or can't tell I put the head on the cake as soon as I crumb coated and it and it kind of slid everywhere. I'd seen a cake of a dino coming out of a shell so that was the idea I was looking for.

 

To start I used-

100g of butter in a pan until it was 

melted

I then put in-

175g of marshmallows

Keep stirring til it looks like this-

Then I added it to 170g of cereal.

The standard rice krispy cakes we all made as kids- cake decorators use these because it's so much easy to get the right shape with these, if you make too much you can just shave it down to the size you want (and eat the rest.)

I used saucepans to be my moulds, as I didn't have much in my kitchen I could use. Bowls or even shaped tins would be better, but you have to work with what you have!!! I greased these with butter. I put them in the fridge for 45 minutes.

One was smaller than the other- so o used this as the top piece of the face. Apparently (according to my boyfriend) it should have been the other way round- I wanted to make a t-Rex but he has informed me it "just looks like a dinosaur" so take whatever you see as a Jurassic Park hybrid...

 

Using a knife and spoon I scooped some rice out for a mouth piece. They should before when you take them out the fridge but soft enough to manipulate.

For the top of the head I used scrap pieces to make lumps and horns (I'm not into dinosaurs if you can't tell) and eye sockets.

As you can see above, I just built up some more "mixture" to create shapes. This is more of a visual blog because it was the first time for myself too- so I have no idea what I'm doing. This could end up badly (I'm pre-empting it 

will.)

Following this you need a good 2/3 layers of fondant because although it may look good "scaly" due to the lumps and bumps I really wanted a smooth finish.

I coloured some green fondant for this- see picture above for lumps- and continues to cover until I was happy.

I did the same with the top. I didn't want the fondant too dark as I wanted to change the texture of the fondant later.

(I also made a deeper imprint with my fingers for the eye socket.)

Explaining the pictures above- I used yellow fondant and rolled it into a "dinosaur eye" shape (is that a thing? At this point my boyfriend said "yes you can tell it's a dinosaur now because it has a yellow eye." I have no idea.)

I then used more green fondant to role into sags and creases around the eye (do dinosaurs have this????) plus a black slit.

I used the end of a bamboo stick to make nostrils which I then put a small ball of black fondant down (I ended up later moving the nostrils further down its snout after a closer look.)

So there you should have something that looks like a dinosaur/crocodile/lizard (praying the teeth makes it looks more jurassic. Wait. Is Jurassic an adjective?? I'm so bored of dinosaurs.)

Next: more green dye on a sponge, and doing what we all did as children (except I'm an adult and this is edible...x100 more fun) 

Looking a bit more like a dinosaur? Is it? Nope... Ok.

Using a pink piece of fondant I rolled it into a tongue shape (I think.) meanwhile I'd alreDy stuck a piece of black fondant into the bottom of my dinosaurs mouth.

Which now looks like this! I was so excited to put the teeth in, I mixed small amount of yellow fondant with white to give it a bone type colour, and rolled them Into sharp teeth.

At this point I definitely should have left it over night but I was in such a rush to get it finished (because I was excited not because I had a time scale) I stuck the teeth on top, sliced a bit of the back and forced open the mouth with 2 pieces of fondant.

At this point it has started to go terribly wrong- as I decided to refrigerate it over night with bamboo sticks stuck throughout to make it stand correctly. 

I also decided to stand it on the lemon cake is made just an hour before so by the morning it had definitely buckled under the weight, and it's a shame really because it could have looked so much better.

My boyfriend also decided he wanted it's mouth pulled further to the front so I did with the help of more sticks (more cake-sliding also I'm afraid!) so loads more fondant was stuck to the sections connecting both sections of its jaw.

Stupidly also I left this in the fridge overnight and the entire thing sweat as soon as I took it out of the fridge and hasn't stopped sweating all day due to the humidity (DONT PUT FONDANT IN THE FRIDGE.)

I used blue fondant to create a pulled back egg effect .

Later I used green buttercream and fondant to make leaves around the bottom and brown fondant to act as the nest in which the egg was sat. I cut 2 piece of green fondant as front claws.

As you can see the finished product is slightly adventurous but oh well- was worth a try and I definitely won't dismiss this in the future! Was considering making the dinosaur out of cake but now realising most of the intricate models you see on cakes are definitely not made from cake!!! 

:-)

Tasmanian Devil Tutorial

This week I've had loads of novelty cakes. I never used to like doing them, but the more I do the more I like them, and the better I get! Here are a few novelty cakes I've done this week: 

Harry Potter themed cake

Frozen themed cake

Minion cake

I was asked to do a Tasmanian devil cake based on a picture of another cake under a picnic blanket eating a sandwich..

 

I started off by baking a couple of 5 inch cakes, layering them and carving the top rounded.

I then crumb coated it and put the cake in the fridge to let it set

I then coloured some fondant dark brown using sugar flair "dark brown" and covered the cake.

I rolled a couple of sausage shapes using the fondant and stuck them on top of the head as hair using warm water

I flattened two rounded pieces of fondant for the ears ...

I used a knife to cut "fur" into the ear and coloured pink fondant as the inside of the ear, I also put pressure to form indentations on the middle of the ear

I used a circle cutter to cut the eyes out 

And using black fondant, I rolled sausage shapes and then flattened them against the sides of the eyes for definition

I then rolled some thick eyebrows out of black fondant.

I made pupils out of black fondant and some cheeks from lighter brown fondant using circular cutters 

I then used cocktail sticks to make whisker spots on the cheeks and a ball of black fondant for the nose

I rolled more sausages of fondant out of light brown fondant for the whiskers

I stuck on the ears and whiskers on with warm water 

I cut a shape of rolled black fondant to fit around the cheeks to make a mouth, and rolled a sausage of red fondant and attached it as a tongue with some warm water... 

I rolled some white fondant balls and fashioned them into teeth shapes

(I had also rolled more brown sausages for more hair and stuck them on behind the ears)

I baked another 7inch cake and crumb coated it with vanilla buttercream

I placed the head ontop of the cake and pushed sticks through both cakes to secure the cakes together 

 

I rolled blue pieces of fondant and cut them into squares to make the picnic blanket .... Cutting them into "folds of fabric" enables it from looking like it's supposed to be wearing clothes!

I stuck polka dots of fondant over the "blanket" as decoration

..and also decided it needed bigger cheeks, so I cut out more brown fondant and stuck them over the original cheeks I had made to make the ale a little more 3D.

To make the hands and feet, I rolled big balls of dark brown fondant and cut three slits into them, before pulling them apart to make simple paws, and placed them on top (hands) and underneath (feet) the picnic blanket.

I then finished the detailing of the cake off with royal icing for the "shine" of the eyes and the nose, green buttercream as "grass" around the cake and finally replaced the sandwiches on the original cake design with a cupcake!

I really enjoyed making this cake. I love doing novelty 3D cakes now from these small 5 inch tins, it allows more detail to go into the cake and there is surprisingly a lot of cake in them (knowing this after cutting Daniella's minion up today!)

L